Real Women Drink Akvavit:Does she have 911 on speed dial or something? That's not a real bright thing to do, especially if you have kids and don't know how to put your phone away or keep it with you at all times.

/hopes she doesn't have firearms as well if she can't even secure a phone from a toddler

The phone pictured is an iPhone. Even if it is locked, you can still make emergency calls.

Cell phones are designed to call 911. I assume that's a law; if not it's a standard feature. I've heard of phones that when "locked" will go into a special 911 mode where they ignore all key presses except 9, then ignore all key presses except for 1, then ignore all key presses except 1, then call the cops. Instead of having to press thousands of buttons at random to dial 911 you only have to press ~50 (depending on how many non-numeric buttons you have).

Cell phones are designed to call 911. I assume that's a law; if not it's a standard feature. I've heard of phones that when "locked" will go into a special 911 mode where they ignore all key presses except 9, then ignore all key presses except for 1, then ignore all key presses except 1, then call the cops. Instead of having to press thousands of buttons at random to dial 911 you only have to press ~50 (depending on how many non-numeric buttons you have).

ZAZ:Cell phones are designed to call 911. I assume that's a law; if not it's a standard feature. I've heard of phones that when "locked" will go into a special 911 mode where they ignore all key presses except 9, then ignore all key presses except for 1, then ignore all key presses except 1, then call the cops. Instead of having to press thousands of buttons at random to dial 911 you only have to press ~50 (depending on how many non-nu

Some phones even go beyond that now. Hit the emergency call button and then a second button and it dials 911 whatever the local country uses, without making you punch in 911.

johnsoninca:While they were dealing with her child's 911 calls, three violent fugitives pulled off a jail escape, seven neighborhood children went missing, and a "sloth" man was spotted at a local restaurant.

This.

16 times?The first time would be one time too many and she calls this an honest mistake.

Cell phones are designed to call 911. I assume that's a law; if not it's a standard feature. I've heard of phones that when "locked" will go into a special 911 mode where they ignore all key presses except 9, then ignore all key presses except for 1, then ignore all key presses except 1, then call the cops. Instead of having to press thousands of buttons at random to dial 911 you only have to press ~50 (depending on how many non-numeric buttons you have).

[0.tqn.com image 69x170]Yep. Exactly. Although that was ten years ago.

monty666:That doesn't seem fair, but you can see why the penalties are in place.

I would sell the kid to pay the fine if it were me.

It would be unfair if they hit her with a fine on the first call. But that's not what happened. Mom let this crap go on for weeks before they hit her with a fine. Then she calls it an "honest mistake". Self-centered c00nt.

After reading the article, this looks like a case of criminal stupidity. After this happened once, a normally intelligent person could be expected to take measures to prevent the child from calling 911 again.

But if stupidity were outlawed ... well, we'd all be outlaws. I am amazed and puzzled by the number of people who leave their cellphones lying around on their desk or tables or what not. Then again, I'm so paranoid and bourgeois that I don't like to leave small change in my desk.

The Scottish leagal system has three possible verdicts: guilty, innocent and not-proven. I think this would be a good addition to any legal system, but another reform might be to add a verdict of stupidity. Maybe it would be the same thing as "criminal negligeance", but maybe not. What if instead of being totally liable for the costs of "criminal negligeance" in the first case, you could be convicted of "criminal stupidity" and fined on a scale, a small sum for first offence, a much larger sum for second offence, and so forth, until you go to jail.

People who are accidentally stupid (using accident in the philosophical sense) would have their wrists slapped, while people who are essentially stupid (as some people are "essential" snobs according to the author of The Book of Snobs) would find their stupidity costly.

We are all accidentally stupid from time to time because humans just don't think or care as much as they could and should, but the real stupids would eventually be locked up for the safety of all concerned. We could draw a line in the sand that we are willing to defend and pay for, and eventually there wouldn't be enough stupids to hold back Civilization. They'd be given simple chores to do that even stupid people would have a hard time farking up and trained to think and be considerate (this latter being as important as the former because a lot of stupidity is lack of consideration).

And they could all be given a copy of Steve Allen's Dumbth and be taught to read it, as well as manuals, instructions, posted speed limits, etc.

The human race has gotten to where it is (on the perpetual brink of doom) by increasing the populaton. From an evolutionary point of view, this is success. From an intelligent point of view, it is catastrophe. I had an epiphany this morning and here is the gist of it: it is time to stop increasing the population and time to start educating and improving it.

Population growth has given us resources to guarantee our survival against most risks other than astronomical disasters or ourselves. The natural population curve is not a hockey stick, it is an sigmoid curve, like the curves of coal, oil, and natural gas production to date.

We need to work now, not to create wealth for the few, nor even comfort and security for the many, but intensive education for all of us. We don't lack intelligence, we lack "common" sense. Voltaire was right. Common sense is not common. But it needs to be.

Future growth and security will be the result of adaptation, not accumulation.

So my toddler loves phones. Mr. Mystapler and I decided to give her one of our old deactivated phones to play with. We even charged it so the keys would make noise when pressed. She loved it! She was happily pressing buttons, and we were happily watching her. Then, we heard, "911, what's your emergency?" We both said oh shiate, grabbed the phone, but by that time the operator had hung up already. That is how we discovered that even deactivated phones can call 911. That being said, we decided to buy her a toy phone and keep the real ones out of her reach. Not that difficult. No reason to let the kid call so many times, unless you are using an app as a babysitter or something.

I'm shocked that no one has pointed out that the article says $6,000 and the headline says $5,000.

Anyway, I feel bad for the kid. If that parent is so bad about keeping a cell phone away from their kid, even after being explicitly warned about it, then I doubt the rest of the house is properly kid-proofed.

mystapler:So my toddler loves phones. Mr. Mystapler and I decided to give her one of our old deactivated phones to play with. We even charged it so the keys would make noise when pressed. She loved it! She was happily pressing buttons, and we were happily watching her. Then, we heard, "911, what's your emergency?" We both said oh shiate, grabbed the phone, but by that time the operator had hung up already. That is how we discovered that even deactivated phones can call 911. That being said, we decided to buy her a toy phone and keep the real ones out of her reach. Not that difficult. No reason to let the kid call so many times, unless you are using an app as a babysitter or something.

Ithaca_StLondon:johnsoninca: While they were dealing with her child's 911 calls, three violent fugitives pulled off a jail escape, seven neighborhood children went missing, and a "sloth" man was spotted at a local restaurant.This.

16 times?The first time would be one time too many and she calls this an honest mistake.

And seven times in one day. She says she was in the bathroom the whole time, but an officer somehow gave her a verbal warning after the sixth that day.

It's really not that hard to put a cellphone out of reach of a 1 year old.

mystapler:So my toddler loves phones. Mr. Mystapler and I decided to give her one of our old deactivated phones to play with. We even charged it so the keys would make noise when pressed. She loved it! She was happily pressing buttons, and we were happily watching her. Then, we heard, "911, what's your emergency?" We both said oh shiate, grabbed the phone, but by that time the operator had hung up already. That is how we discovered that even deactivated phones can call 911. That being said, we decided to buy her a toy phone and keep the real ones out of her reach. Not that difficult. No reason to let the kid call so many times, unless you are using an app as a babysitter or something.

This is what the iPod touch is for. Looks just like mommy's phone, plays games, can't call 911.

mystapler:So my toddler loves phones. Mr. Mystapler and I decided to give her one of our old deactivated phones to play with. We even charged it so the keys would make noise when pressed. She loved it! She was happily pressing buttons, and we were happily watching her. Then, we heard, "911, what's your emergency?" We both said oh shiate, grabbed the phone, but by that time the operator had hung up already. That is how we discovered that even deactivated phones can call 911. That being said, we decided to buy her a toy phone and keep the real ones out of her reach. Not that difficult. No reason to let the kid call so many times, unless you are using an app as a babysitter or something.

Aren't kids wonderful?

I was doing my son's diaper when he was about 10-12 months old. I had him on the floor with his diaper off and the baby powder right next to me. I had this whole layout set up, a whole routine. So, just as I turn to the left to grab a clean diaper, my son reached over, grabbed the baby powder, and commenced to chug as much of it as possible. Of course, after the first puff, he started gagging and sputtering, then burst out bawling. I looked at the back of the bottle of baby powder and it said, 'IN CASE OF INGESTION CALL POISON CONTROL IMMEDIATELY." I freaked the fark out, called poison control, and told them what happened. The lady on the other end of the line asked what's in the baby powder. I read the ingredients and saw it's primarily corn starch. She just chuckled and told me not to worry about it.

My iPhone dialed my mother seventeen times in ten minutes while it was in my bike bag. It was locked, and there wasn't anything in the bag that should have been able to interact with the capacitative touchscreen. So I have <i>some</i> sympathy for the mom, since it's possible her phone was malfunctioning and she blamed the toddler because she couldn't come up with any other plausible explanation. Who would believe the phone was malfunctioning? Not me if I saw my kid playing with it. Not me if I was one of the cops investigating.

I had a Blackberry a few years ago that if it was locked, you could call 911 by double tapping on the middle of the screen. The unlock screen had the 'unlock', 'emergency call', and 'cancel' buttons. If you hit 'emergency call' it would have 'are you sure' in the same vicinity, and boom, 911 was called. When my daughter was 1 she liked to 'steal' the phone and sometimes just grabbing it called 911. More than once it was locked and in my shirt pocket and it would dial them. If it wasn't locked it would just randomly dial and email people. I had to get a different phone from work. If I would have gotten fined that much I would have sued RIM.

If you have an Android phone, the 'toddler lock' program is a must have. You unlock it by pressing all 4 corners clockwise. But other than that they can make snowflakes and triangles without messing up your phone or calling/emailing people.

My cheap Tracfone does nothing but make calls and send text messages, and calls 911 while locked and in my pocket. Just press and hold any button and bingo 911 is calling back, happened twice in two days, I apologized profusely!

just_another_asshole/jaa:My cheap Tracfone does nothing but make calls and send text messages, and calls 911 while locked and in my pocket. Just press and hold any button and bingo 911 is calling back, happened twice in two days, I apologized profusely!

Damn. And I thought my flip-phone with physical media control buttons on the outside of the phone was bad just because it liked to start playing music in my pocket about once a day.

just_another_asshole/jaa:My cheap Tracfone does nothing but make calls and send text messages, and calls 911 while locked and in my pocket. Just press and hold any button and bingo 911 is calling back, happened twice in two days, I apologized profusely!

tracfone makes a $40 flip phone by LG, the LG420Gand no media control buttons, cause it's not advanced to do thatget that

johnsoninca:While they were dealing with her child's 911 calls, three violent fugitives pulled off a jail escape, seven neighborhood children went missing, and a "sloth" man was spotted at a local restaurant.

This is astoria oregon we are talking about. While this kid was on the phone with 911... there were three other operators on break. One listening in and laughing, 3 police officers, 2 medics and some firemen were playing pool or darts 30 yards away.

The article says 16 times, but later indicates it may have been 6 or 7.

Either way, that's too many times for a toddler to accidently dial a phone to the same number, and she deserves a fine. Perhaps she should get a playpen if she's going to leave the kid unsupervised for a few minutes and the kid gets into that much trouble....just luck the kid hasn't seriously injured herself.

octopied:The article says 16 times, but later indicates it may have been 6 or 7.

Either way, that's too many times for a toddler to accidently dial a phone to the same number, and she deserves a fine. Perhaps she should get a playpen if she's going to leave the kid unsupervised for a few minutes and the kid gets into that much trouble....just luck the kid hasn't seriously injured herself.

Read just a little harder, they break it down mid-article. It was 16 times, total: 7 calls all on the same day, and another 9 calls over the past 3 months.

fallingcow:just_another_asshole/jaa: My cheap Tracfone does nothing but make calls and send text messages, and calls 911 while locked and in my pocket. Just press and hold any button and bingo 911 is calling back, happened twice in two days, I apologized profusely!

Damn. And I thought my flip-phone with physical media control buttons on the outside of the phone was bad just because it liked to start playing music in my pocket about once a day.

That is like the Samsung I had awhile back, camera button was on the side and I took many pictures of the inside of my pocket!